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Cinema took over a snowy German capital on Thursday evening as the 2025 Berlin Film Festival officially kicked off with a breezy opening ceremony at the Berlinale Palast Theater.

The ceremony was much shorter than previous editions, with the bulk of the evening serving as the presentation of this year’s Honorary Bear for career achievement, which was handed to veteran actor Tilda Swinton. German filmmaker Edward Berger presented Swinton the award and she gave an impassioned, political speech to the audience inside the Palast.

“The inhumane is being perpetrated on our watch,” Swinton began her speech. “I’m here to name it without hesitation or doubt in my mind, and to lend my unwavering solidarity to all those who recognize the unacceptable complacency of our greed-addicted governments who make nice with planet wreckers and war criminals, wherever they come from.”

Swinton did not name politicians or specific conflicts but appeared to criticize U.

Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon,” starring Ethan Hawke and Margaret Qualley, and Michel Franco’s “Dreams” with Jessica Chastain are slated to compete at the 75th edition of the Berlin Film Festival. This year’s jury will be presided over by “May December” filmmaker Todd Haynes.

“Blue Moon,” which also stars Bobby Cannavale and Andrew Scott, is a long-gestating project which charts the final days of Lorenz Hart, half of the songwriting team Rodgers & Hart. The film has already been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics.

“Dreams” reunites Franco with Chastain following 2023’s “Memory.” The film stars Isaac Hernández as Fernando, a young ballet dancer from Mexico, who dreams of being internationally recognized and living in the U.S. Chastain plays his lover, a socialite and philanthropist.

Jessica Chastain in Michel Franco’s “Dreams”

Other notable titles on the competition roster include “Hot Milk,” the feature debut of acclaimed screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz...

The Berlin Film Festival on Tuesday unveiled the full list of titles set for its official competition alongside perspective and specials sidebars.

A total of 19 films have been selected for the international competition. It’s a buzzy selection with multiple titles that have been anticipated and boast high-profile names. Highlights include Richard Linklater’s latest feature Blue Moon, starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale and Andrew Scott. Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco launches his latest title Dreams in competition. The film stars Jessica Chastain, Isaac Hernández and Rupert Friend. Franco last worked with Chastain on the Venice competition title Memory.

Elsewhere, Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude lands in competition with Kontinental ’25. Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk starring Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw and Vicky Krieps also secures a spot alongside Hong Sangsoo’s latest What Does that Nature Say to You, and Mumblecore veteran Mary Bronstein returns as a director with If I Had Legs I’d Kick You...

The competition line-up for the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival is being announced at a press conference at 11am Cet (10am GMT).

Scroll down for line-up

New festival director Tricia Tuttle is revealing the titles for the Competition and new Perspectives strand alongside co-directors of film programming Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz.

The announcement is being live-streamed on the festival’s social channels. Watch it live above.

Screen will update this page with the titles as they are announced. Refresh the page for latest updates.

As previously announced, the festival will open with Tom Tykwer’s Special Gala out of competition selection The Light.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSEvil Does Not Exist.We are saddened to learn that Issue 97 will be Cinema Scope’s last in its current form. To “do something valuable in this field,” editor and publisher Mark Peranson writes, “one needs creative freedom.” This is exactly what, for twenty-five years and just under 100 issues, Cinema Scope was able to provide, offering a space that allowed, per Peranson, “a certain kind of filmmaker’s work to be treated with the intellect and respect they deserve.” The print issue is on its way to subscribers now, and its entire contents—including interviews with Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Rodrigo Moreno, and Alex Ross Perry—can also be read online.Sandra Milo has died at the age of 90. She starred in Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963) and Juliet of the Spirits...

The following interview was originally published in the second issue of Outskirts Film Magazine, an independent print magazine on the past and present of cinema. Issue two is now available from the Outskirts e-shop.At 189 pages, Outskirts Nº2 is made up of original essays, interviews, reviews, translations, and a single large dossier dedicated to Japanese filmmaker and actress Tanaka Kinuyo.Forever a Woman.During the last edition of the Locarno Film Festival, a retrospective dedicated to Douglas Sirk took place, organised by Bernard Eisenschitz and Roberto Turigliatto. Among the many incredible guests invited to introduce Sirk’s films, such as Miguel Marías, Jon Halliday, Olaf Möller, Martina Müller, was Laura Mulvey. In speaking to her several months later, what started out initially as a conversation between myself and Mulvey about Sirk, unexpectedly morphed into a broader investigation that included the work of Tanaka Kinuyo, the subject of our dossier.The...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSOn July 13, SAG-AFTRA issued a strike order, joining the WGA, who have been striking since May. In an incendiary speech, the guild’s president, Fran Drescher, said: “SAG-AFTRA negotiated in good faith and was eager to reach a deal that sufficiently addressed performer needs, but the AMPTP’s responses to the union’s most important proposals have been insulting and disrespectful of our massive contributions to this industry…Until they do negotiate in good faith, we cannot begin to reach a deal.” This Vulture Q&a with Jonathan Handel, author of Hollywood on Strike!: An Industry at War in the Internet Age, delves into the details of the work stoppage.Applications are open for Open City Documentary Festival & Another Gaze’s third annual critics’ workshop, which will take place in early September during the festival.

Ivana Miloš, The Man Who Made Cacti Bloom (2022), monotype, gouache, and collage on paper.Home Is Where The Plant Grows“His spirit responds to his country's spirit....he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes.“—Walt Whitman, PrefaceIn Europe, most people dislike the highly invasive Himalayan balsam. It is spreading aggressively across the continent, suffocating potential plant diversity while suffusing whole areas with a sweet and musty smell. My response to the plant is quite different. I adore everything about it. Its pink-purple flowers bending to the ground like little bells, its toothlike glands, rain dropping from its leaves, and especially the way its oval-shaped seed pods impatiently explode when I touch them with my fingers. And then the way my fingers smell afterwards—I could go on and on. This plant grew right in front of my family home. It was everywhere: Next to the pathway,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSKing Lear.Jean-Luc Godard, groundbreaking French-Swiss filmmaker across six decades, died last week at age 91. In the week since, a number of tributes have been shared: among them, Blair McClendon in n+1, J. Hoberman in The Nation, Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, and Richard Hell in Screen Slate. Alternatively, you can find a 2002 essay on Godard by filmmaker and theorist Peter Wollen on Verso's blog, watch a 1988 conversation between Godard and critic Serge Daney, or read this list Godard contributed to the British film journal Afterimage in 1970. Shadow and Act founder Tambay Obenson is fundraising to launch Akoroko, a new platform devoted to African film and television. The platform intends to combine film journalism with “consultation, cataloging, and curated film streaming.”Two posters (below) for the 61st New York Film Festival feature photographs taken by Nan Goldin.

Mubi has announced its lineup of streaming offerings for next month and amongst the highlights are a Ricky D’Ambrose double bill, including his new film The Cathedral, as well as a trio of films by Maurice Pialat, Gaspar Noé’s Vortex, David Osit’s Mayor, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, an expansion of their Tilda Swinton series, and more.

Also including films by Tsai Ming-liang, Sky Hopinka, Nacho Vigalondo, Anton Corbijn, and more check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

September 1 – Classical Period, directed by Ted Fendt | Ted Fendt Focus

September 2 – 2 Days in New York, directed by Julie Delpy

September 3 – Timecrimes, directed by Nacho Vigalondo

September 4 – Małni – Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore, directed by Sky Hopinka

September 6 – Mayor, directed by David Osit

September 7 – Friendship’s Death, directed by Peter Wollen | The One and Only: Tilda Swinton

September 8 – Hideous, directed by Yann Gonzalez | Brief Encounters

September 9 – The Cathedral,...

I will often exclaim about some films that they have creatively adapted to the more recent questions regarding the nature of cinema and that they belong so evidently to a new front of tenacious filmmaking: “Finally, a film of my times”. Yet, being a hybrid between modern and older cinematic language, Ana Tapia Rousiouk and Renaud Després-Larose’s The Dream And The Radio also seems to go beyond our times, in an ambitious formal experiment that seems like a perfect contemporary example of what Peter Wollen would have called ‘counter cinema’. It employs devices of estrangement, reflexivity - an intellectual melting pot of fiction and reality.

Closer to an essay film and far from classic fiction, The Dream And The Radio calls to mind the political and iconoclastic spirit of Godard in the 70s. Cinema is the political text itself, in terms of story but also of style. Raoul (explicitly also named.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSChameleon StreetThe New York Film Festival has announced an excellent selection for its Revivals section. The roster includes restorations of Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala, John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, Sarah Maldoror's Sambizanga, Wendell B. Harris Jr.'s Chameleon Street, and Michael Powell's Bluebeard's Castle. The 2021 Locarno Film Festival has come to an end, with Indonesian filmmaker Edwin's Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash winning the Golden Leopard. For a full list of this year's award winners, read here. Recommended VIEWINGAhead of premiere, a trailer for the latest Spike Lee joint: the four-part documentary series NYC Epicenters: 9/11 → 2021 ½. The series, which captures twenty years of New York City history from the perspective of its citizens, will premiere on HBO Max August 22. Cinema Guild has released a trailer for Matías Piñeiro's Isabella.

Does life imitate art? Honor Swinton Byrne with her mother Tilda Swinton as mother and daughter in Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir: Part II part of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Directors' Fortnight The unmistakeable Tilda Swinton, of the porcelain complexion, willowy frame and punkish hair-dos, has been akin to Cannes Film Festival royalty for years.

This year of all years is no exception with Swinton, 60, appearing in a record five high-profile titles -Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir: Part II as part of the Directors’ Fortnight, as well as Competition contenders Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria and Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch. She makes additional appearances in Cannes Classics presentations of Peter Wollen’s 1987 Friendship’s Death as an extra-terrestrial named Friendship and in The Storms Of Jeremy Thomas, Mark Cousins’s road trip from London to Cannes to interview the Oscar-wining film-maker.

Swinton also has another rather important...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Kinuyo Tanaka. Courtesy of Nikkatsu / Carlotta. The Cannes Film Festival has announced the titles of its Cannes Classics section, which includes restored films by Kinuyo Tanaka, Bill Duke, Peter Wollen, and Oscar Micheaux. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Mati Diop, Jessica Hausner, Mylene Farmer, Tahar Rahim, Song Kang-ho and Kleber Mendonça Filho will join director Spike Lee on the Cannes 2021 Competition jury.The Toronto International Film Festival is starting to announce its lineup for this year's edition, from an Alanis Morissette documentary and Kenneth Branagh's Belfast to Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho and Denis Villeneuve's Dune.In a special episode of New Beverly's Pure Cinema Podcast, Quentin Tarantino has announced he will work with Sony on a new, boutique Blu-Ray label "Tarantino Archives," taking inspiration from Twilight Time and reissuing films from their catalogue.

Cannes Classics

Mark Cousins‘ documentary “The Storms Of Jeremy Thomas,” following the legendary “The Last Emperor” and “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” producer’s annual drive to Cannes, will be the pre-opener at the Cannes Classics selection this year.

Restored titles this year include “Friendship’s Death” by Peter Wollen, starring Tilda Swinton; “F For Fake” by Orson Welles; “Mulholland Drive” by David Lynch (2001 U.S.); “I Know Where I’m Going!” by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger; and “The Double Life Of Véronique by Krzysztof Kieślowski”.

The section will also celebrate the work of actor/director Bill Duke with a screening of “The Killing Floor” (1985); Japanese actor and filmmaker Kinuyo Tanaka’s “Tsuki Wa Noborinu”; Spanish actor and filmmaker Ana Marisca’s “El Camino” from 1964; French maven Marcel Camus’ “Orfeu Negro” and Italian master Roberto Rossellini’s “Francesco, Giullare Di Dio”.

Oscar Micheaux, the first African-American director in the history of U.

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the lineup for its 2021 Cannes Classics section. Made up of a selection of restored prints, the roster also includes new documentaries that explore the history of cinema. Among the offerings is Mark Cousins’ pre-opening doc, The Storms Of Jeremy Thomas, which covers a yearly drive with the British producer from London to Cannes. Cousins and Thomas will be in town for the presentation. (Scroll down for the full Cannes Classics list.)

Restored titles include David Lynch’s 2001 Mulholland Drive; 1945’s I Know Where I’m Going! by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger; Krzysztof Kieślowski’s 1991 drama The Double Life Of Véronique; Orson Welles’ F For Fake from 1973; and Friendship’s Death by Peter Wollen which features Tilda Swinton’s first role.

Among the special events are a tribute to director and actor Bill Duke who will present his 1985 The Killing Floor which premiered at Critics...

Tilda Swinton to attend restored screening of Peter Wollen’s 1987 UK film Friendship’s Death.

Two documentaries from Mark Cousins and restored films from Kinuyo Tanaka, Oscar Micheaux, and Orson Welles will screen in Cannes Classics, announced on Wednesday (June 23).

Cousins’ The Story Of Film: A New Generation and The Storms Of Jeremy Thomas, a profile of the celebrated British producer, are among a documentary line-up that incudes Buñuel, Un Cineasta Surrealista from Javier Espada, and All About Yves Montand by Yves Jeuland.

The roster of restored narrative films includes David Lynch’s 2001 Mulholland Drive, Japanese actor-filmmaker Kinuyo Tanaka’s (pictured) The Moon Has Risen,...

Peter Wollen’s 1987 two-hander has Swinton and Bill Paterson holed up in a hotel room watching football in 1970s Jordan

In 1987, the late English critic, theorist and film-maker Peter Wollen directed his only solo feature film: an insouciantly baffling two-hander called Friendship’s Death, now rereleased. It was a cinema of ideas, rare then, rarer now, high-mindedly produced by the British Film Institute and Channel 4. Bill Paterson plays Sullivan: a hardbitten, boozy journalist holed up in a shabby hotel in Amman in Jordan in 1970, during the civil war and the “Black September” era of Plo hijackings. He is astonished – though, amusingly, never quite as astonished you think he ought to be – to be confronted by a hyperintelligent and ethereally beautiful young woman named Friendship, who hangs out in his room and reveals herself to be a creature sent from a distant planet to study humankind. She is played by Tilda Swinton,...

Talking Heads’ frontman David Byrne will also give a Screen Talk.

UK actors Letitia Wright, Riz Ahmed, and Tilda Swinton will each take part in the online Screen Talks and events programme of the 64th BFI London Film Festival (October 7-18).

Wright and Ahmed will give Screen Talks about their careers. Both are former Screen Stars of Tomorrow from 2012 and 2006; Wright appears at the Lff in Steve McQueen’s festival opener Mangrove, while Ahmed wrote and starred in Bassam Tariq’s rap drama Mogul Mowgli.

Tilda Swinton will take part in a session titled ‘Reflections on Friendship’s Death’, a...

The London Film Festival’s Screen Talks and events program will include speakers Riz Ahmed, Letitia Wright, Michel Franco, Miranda July, Tsai Ming-liang, Christian Petzold, David Byrne and artist Es Devlin, who will each talk about their most recent work. Anna Bogutskaya, co-founder of horror film collective The Final Girls, will lead a conversation exploring the female horror renaissance; British filmmaker Yemi Bamiro, will discuss One Man And His Shoes, a documentary that tells the story of the phenomenon of Air Jordan sneakers; film critic Kaleem Aftab will discuss issues of identity in the depiction of the British Asian experience with After Love director Aleem Khan, Hardeep Pandhall (Happy Thuggish Paki) and Dawinder Bansal (Jambo Cinema). Talk ‘Reflections On Friendships’ Death’ will see actors Bill Paterson and Tilda Swinton, producer Rebecca O’Brien and cinematographer Witold Stok discuss Peter Wollen’s Friendship’s Death, which has been newly restored by the BFI National Archive.

The 64th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express on Tuesday unveiled its lineup of Screen Talks and events that will be available for free via YouTube and the fest’s social channels, including sessions with Letitia Wright and Riz Ahmed.

Among filmmakers, this year’s virtual event will feature the likes of Michel Franco, Miranda July, Tsai Ming-liang, Christian Petzold, musician and performer David Byrne and artist Es Devlin discussing their careers.

Meanwhile, the fest’s Treasures strand, which features recently restored cinematic classics and discoveries from archives around the world, will include a discussion of Peter Wollen’...

The 64th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express on Tuesday unveiled its lineup of Screen Talks and events that will be available for free via YouTube and the fest’s social channels, including sessions with Letitia Wright and Riz Ahmed.

Among filmmakers, this year’s virtual event will feature the likes of Michel Franco, Miranda July, Tsai Ming-liang, Christian Petzold, musician and performer David Byrne and artist Es Devlin discussing their careers.

Meanwhile, the fest’s Treasures strand, which features recently restored cinematic classics and discoveries from archives around the world, will include a discussion of Peter Wollen’...

The fall film festival season, one unlike any other, continues on as BFI London Film Festival have announced the full lineup for their 68th edition. Featuring both virtually and physical screenings, the festival takes place between October 7-18. The physical screenings will occur at BFI Southbank and cinemas across the UK while all virtual screenings are geo-blocked to the UK, though Festival talks and Lff Expanded are available to experience for free from anywhere in the world. The lineup features Pixar’s latest animation Soul, as well as new films by Tsai Ming-liang, Francis Lee, Chloé Zhao, Steve McQueen, Garrett Bradley, Christian Petzold, Chaitanya Tamhane, Miranda July, and more.

“This has been such a period of uncertainty and change across the industry and when we embarked on a radical new plans for our 2020 edition, we stepped into unknown territory,” said Tricia Tuttle, BFI London Film Festival Director. “But we’ve...

This year’s BFI London Film Festival, taking place as a hybrid of online and physical activities due to ongoing pandemic disruption, has unveiled a program of 58 titles.

A selection of screenings will take place at cinemas and others will take place in a virtual form for audiences across the UK. The films come from 40 countries. All screenings are geo-blocked to the UK, though festival talks will be available to experience for free around the world.

As previously announced, Steve McQueen’s Mangrove will open this year’s fest and Francis Lee’s Ammonite will close.

Titles include Pixar’s new movie Soul, which would’ve been at Cannes, Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, which is set to premiere in Venice, Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, which was part of this year’s Cannes Label, Miranda July’s Kajillionaire, which debuted at Sundance, Bassam Tariq’s Mogul Mowgli, which was at Berlinale,...

Pixar’s ‘Soul’ and Chloe Zhao’s ‘Nomadland’ are two of four cinema-only titles.

The BFI London Film Festival has unveiled the full programme for its 2020 physical-virtual hybrid edition, with 58 features playing to audiences across the UK from October 7-18.

Pixar’s Soul and Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland starring Frances McDormand join Steve McQueen’s festival opener Mangrove and Francis Lee’s closer Ammonite as the four cinema-only titles, playing at select venues across the country.

Scroll down for the full lineup of features

A further 10 titles will play both in cinemas and via the festival’s online platform. These...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWith the eyebrow-raising working title of Soggy Bottom, Paul Thomas Anderson's new 70s-set project has quietly begun shooting in Los Angeles with Bradley Cooper, and possibly Alana Haim of the band Haim. Speaking of new projects, the next feature by Hirokazu Kore-eda will be a Korean production starring Bae Doona (who previously starred in his film Air Doll) and Song Kang-ho. Entitled Broker, the film is about characters linked by a "baby box," a place where parents may anonymously drop off babies they are unable to raise. Berlinale has announced plans for its 2021 edition, which will be a physical festival. For the first time, performance awards will be gender neutral, replacing the awards for the Best Actor and the Best Actress with a Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance and a Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance.

Kate Winslet is the first honoree to be announced by Joana Vicente and Cameron Bailey, co-heads of the Toronto Film Festival, as recipient of this year’s TIFF Tribute Actor Award. It will be presented September 15 during a “virtual ceremony” as part of the 45th edition of the slimmed-down fest, which like everything else has been deeply impacted by the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

Winslet’s film Ammonite was previously announced as a TIFF official selection where, after Telluride’s cancellation Tuesday, it is likely to be the first fest where the Neon Oscar-season hopeful will be seen. Last month, the Cannes Film Festival revealed the movie was a main competition selection for that fest, which of course did not take place. Nevertheless, the Cannes logo will appear on the film anyway.

“Kate’s brilliant and compelling onscreen presence continues to captivate, entertain, and inspire audiences and actors alike,” said Vicente.

Selection also pays tribute to late UK filmmaker and cinema theorist Peter Wollen.

Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s award-winning romantic drama In The Mood For Love is among the 25 narrative titles and seven documentaries selected for Cannes Classics 2020, the cinema heritage programe of the Cannes Film Festival.

The festival said many of the titles would now play at the Festival Lumière in Lyon, which Cannes Film Festival’s delegate general Thierry Frémaux oversees and runs October 10-18 this year.

Some of the works will also screen at the long-running Rencontres Cinématographiques de Cannes, scheduled for November 23 to 26.

The festival...

One of the most interesting sections of Cannes Film Festival each year is their Classics section, which is made up of new restorations and filmmaking-related documentaries. The lineup often gives a look ahead at what classic and overlooked films may be getting new Blu-ray editions, as well as digital debuts, and theatrical re-releases. Following the reveal of Cannes-selected premieres this year, they’ve now unveiled their Classics lineup.

This year’s slate, made up of 25 features and 7 documentaries, will screen at the Lumière festival in Lyon and by the Rencontres Cinématographiques de Cannes. Leading the pack, and announced a few months ago, is the new 20th anniversary restoration of In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai. Also in the lineup is 60th anniversary restorations of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, while a selection of Federico Fellini classics have been restored for this 100th birthday.

Peter Wollen’s Friendship’s Death,...

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the lineup for the 17th edition of Cannes Classics, a popular sidebar dedicated to restored heritage movies and documentaries that forms part of the Official Selection.

This year’s roster comprises 25 feature films and seven documentaries. The highlights are Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love,” which celebrates its 25th anniversary, as well as Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” and Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Aventura,” which are both turning 60. Cannes Classics will also turn the spotlight on Federico Fellini, the Italian master who would have turned 100 in 2020. Two films by Fellini are part of the selection, “La strada” and “Luci del varietà,” along with the documentary “Fellini of the Spirits” directed by Anselma dell’Olio.

Cannes Classics will also spotlight rare films such as Peter Wollen’s “Friendship’s Death” in which Tilda Swinton delivered a breakthrough performance in 1987, and “The Story of a Three-Day Pass,...

Selection also pays tribute to late UK filmmaker and cinema theorist Peter Wollen.

Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s award-winning romantic drama In The Mood For Love is among the 25 narrative titles and seven documentaries selected for Cannes Classics 2020, the cinema heritage programe of the Cannes Film Festival.

The festival said many of the titles would now play at the Festival Lumière in Lyon, which Cannes Film Festival’s delegate general Thierry Frémaux oversees and runs October 10-18 this year.

Some of the works will also screen at the long-running Rencontres Cinématographiques de Cannes, scheduled for November 23 to 26.

The festival...

Tammes was the first woman to graduate in camera from the UK’s Nfts.

Pioneering British cinematographer Diane Tammes – the first woman to graduate in camera from the UK’s National Film and Television School (Nfts) – has died, on May 30 aged 78.

Tammes began her career as a stills photographer in Scotland, working at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum and Glasgow’s Scottish Opera and Citizens Theatre.

After attending the Nfts in 1971 – the school’s second year in existence – Tammes became the first woman to be accredited by the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians.

Her membership brought about a change...

IndieWire asked Larry Fessenden, actor/producer/filmmaker and founder of indie production outfit Glass Eye Pix to remember fellow filmmaker and long-time playwright Stuart Gordon, best known for his trademark horror offerings “Re-Animator,” “Dagon,” and “From Beyond.” On Tuesday, Gordon died at at age 72.

Like many horror fans of my generation, I saw “Re-Animator” in the theater on the big screen. It was a revelation, so bold and sassy and that Barbara Crampton, whew! The practical effects had such exuberance (talking severed head in a medical tray anyone?) you could sense his history in experimental theater by the way he staged gore gags. “Re-Animator” put filmmaker Stuart Gordon squarely in the company of iconic horror auteurs John Carpenter and George Romero, and it began his life-long affinity for H.P. Lovecraft adaptations. His follow-up film was another Lovecraft story, “From Beyond” and it did not disappoint. Gordon would go on to...

Pedro Almodóvar has spent months on the campaign trail for “Pain and Glory,” but the 70-year-old Spanish auteur is wasting no time going back to work. In an interview over the weekend, Almodóvar revealed exclusively to IndieWire his plans to direct two new projects in the months ahead — a short film starring Tilda Swinton adapted from Jean Cocteau’s one-act play “The Human Voice,” followed by a feature-length adaptation of the late American writer Lucia Berlin’s short story collection, “A Manual for Cleaning Women.”

The two projects will mark Almodóvar’s long-awaited foray into English-language filmmaking after several other attempts over the years, from an offer to direct “Sister Act” in the early nineties to his Alice Munro adaptation “Julieta,” which was originally set to start Meryl Streep before Almodóvar decided to do the project in Spanish. Sources in Almodóvar’s inner circle expressed uncertainty about the overall timeline for the two projects,...

Film-maker and theorist whose groundbreaking textbook was instrumental in launching a new academic discipline

Peter Wollen, who has died aged 81 after suffering from Alzheimer’s, did much to launch film studies in the UK and Us. In 1967 the pioneering teacher Paddy Whannel invited him to join the British Film Institute’s education department, and while working there he wrote Signs and Meanings in the Cinema (1969). It has remained in print in successive editions since, and provided a basic text for the new academic discipline.

The book contains essays on the director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein, rescuing him from the reputation of being Stalin’s propagandist and placing him among the avant-garde artists of the early Soviet era; on auteur theory, already proposed by French and American critics, underpinning the idea of tracing a consistent signature within routine commercial filmmaking; and on semiology, the study of signs, applied here to the language of film.

Peter Wollen, who wrote and directed the early Tilda Swinton movie Friendship's Death and penned Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, an influential 1969 book about film theory, has died. He was 81.

Wollen died Tuesday in Haslemere, Surrey, after a long struggle with Alzheimer's, his son, Chad Wollen, announced.

Wollen also co-wrote with Mark Peploe the screenplay for Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (1975), starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider, and collaborated with fellow film theorist Laura Mulvey, his first wife, on several projects, including the documentary Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974) and the features Riddles of ...

Peter Wollen, who wrote and directed the early Tilda Swinton movie Friendship's Death and penned Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, an influential 1969 book about film theory, has died. He was 81.

Wollen died Tuesday in Haslemere, Surrey, after a long struggle with Alzheimer's, his son, Chad Wollen, announced.

Wollen also co-wrote with Mark Peploe the screenplay for Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (1975), starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider, and collaborated with fellow film theorist Laura Mulvey, his first wife, on several projects, including the documentary Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974) and the features Riddles of ...

Peter Wollen, film theorist and filmmaker, has died at the age of 81. Wollen is best known for writing the 1969 film theory book “Signs and Meaning in the Cinema,” which became famous for approaching film studies through structuralism and semiotics. “Signs and Meaning” was one of over two dozen film theory books Wollen wrote or contributed to over nearly four decades.

In the film industry itself, Wollen got his start by sharing a screenwriting credit on Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1975 drama “The Passenger,” starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider. Wollen made his directorial debut with “Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons,” which he directed alongside his wife, legendary film scholar Laura Mulvey. The two made several films together. The only film to be solo-directed by Wollen was the 1987 science-fiction romance “Friendship’s Death,” starring Bill Paxton and Tilda Swinton. The latter played a female extraterrestrial robot who crash lands on earth and meets a British war correspondent.

I'm drawn to Straub-Huillet’s usage of direct quotations rather than adapting or interpreting original material for a film. To me this is, among other things, a very straightforward and concrete way of highlighting that people are much less original than they are often assumed to be. (I think that Danièle Huillet once said this, but she was certainly not the first one.) It might be worth being reminded of this, especially today, in a time where we see and seek constant innovation and renewal everywhere while nothing really changes at the core. But for Straub-Huillet, quotation is also about something else. Every film of theirs is a documentation of their loving relationship to a preexisting text, artwork, or artist. The films are more genuinely about the work of the other and less about the couple's so-called vision. Quotation, to Straub-Huillet, is an act of respect, one...

"I came to movies through books," writes David Bordwell in an entry marking the publication of the 11th edition of Film Art: An Introduction, which he's co-written with Kristin Thompson and Jeff Smith. Over the years, Film Art has become by far the most-assigned textbook on cinema and Bordwell has decided to "wax a little personal and talk about how Film Art has reflected my developing ideas about movies." Also: Jonathan Rosenbaum on books by Peter Wollen, James Monaco and Edward Mendelson; a new collection on Claire Denis; a profile of Joan Didion; a duel biography of Andy Griffith and Don Knotts; and a memoir from Joel Grey. » - David Hudson...

"I came to movies through books," writes David Bordwell in an entry marking the publication of the 11th edition of Film Art: An Introduction, which he's co-written with Kristin Thompson and Jeff Smith. Over the years, Film Art has become by far the most-assigned textbook on cinema and Bordwell has decided to "wax a little personal and talk about how Film Art has reflected my developing ideas about movies." Also: Jonathan Rosenbaum on books by Peter Wollen, James Monaco and Edward Mendelson; a new collection on Claire Denis; a profile of Joan Didion; a duel biography of Andy Griffith and Don Knotts; and a memoir from Joel Grey. » - David Hudson...

The first time I saw anything from a Godard film, I hated it.

My first encounter with his work was perhaps appropriately abrupt and fragmentary. I was in my first year as a Film Studies major, in an introductory class about the French New Wave. Having grown up on a steady diet of Hollywood classics, I was hoping this would be an exciting new discovery. Mid-lecture, the professor showed a clip from the near the end of Tout va bien, his 1972 film co-directed with Jean-Pierre Gorin. The scene was the famous ten-minute-long tracking shot in which the camera moves laterally along a supermarket’s checkout aisles as student demonstrators wreak havoc. Going in, the professor warned us that we would likely find the scene annoying and overlong, and that that was “the point.”

I watched. I waited for enlightenment.

I was unimpressed.

I did not get it, but I was a quiet,...

The new Spring 2012 issue of Cineaste is out and selections online include James L Neibaur on Kino's Blu-ray releases of Buster Keaton's work (as well as eleven more DVD/Blu-ray reviews), Andrew Horton's remembrance of Theo Angelopolous, Anchalee Chaiwaraporn and Kong Rithdee on the politics of Thai film and the opening paragraphs of Thomas Doherty's review of Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director:

Generally admiring but never intoxicated, Patrick McGilligan's insightful biography is a chronicle not only of the troubled director but also of the Hollywood studio system at dusk, the vagaries of the multilateral skirmishes between French, British, and American film criticism, and the political follies roiling through twentieth-century America. The author of well-regarded biographies of Fritz Lang and Clint Eastwood and the editor of the invaluable Backstory series of interviews with Hollywood screenwriters (who all prove to be much more than...

A study of the pioneering French film magazine documents its vast influence

Cahiers du Cinéma, the world's best-known film magazine, is, according to Emilie Bickerton in her admirable history, "limping on today as another banal mouthpiece of the spectacle". It will be 60 next year, provided it survives its latest change in ownership from Le Monde to the British publishing house Phaidon. It was founded in 1951 by a trio of writers, chief among them France's most respected critic and theorist, the 33-year-old André Bazin, a liberal Catholic of wide and generous sympathies. He attracted a group of young men of passionate views frequently expressed in extreme, sometimes mystical terms. They attacked respectable literary cinema ("la qualité française") and the tastes of an older generation ("le cinéma du papa") and exalted the director as individual creator ("la politique des auteurs"), most especially old Hollywood masters like Hawks, Hitchcock, Preminger and Walsh. These young Turks,...